Bodily Labor and Gendered Flexibility in Taiwan’s Coffee Chains: Comparative Ethnographic Insights

This comparative ethnographic study examines the integration of human resource flexibilities with the labor practices of women workers in Taiwan’s service sector, focusing on coffee shops. It uncovers the intrinsic link between corporate flexibility strategies and the mobilization of gendered norms. The study provides a novel perspective on how workforce management configurations achieve both numerical and functional flexibilities through physical labor. Two coffee shops, one a multinational chain and the other a local franchise, serve as case studies. Despite offering similar services, their technological and bureaucratic settings vary significantly, leading to distinct labor dynamics.

In multinational chain stores, individual cooperation with automatic machines is enforced, turning workers' bodily labor into an extension of the machine and facilitating flexible scheduling. Conversely, small franchises rely on teamwork, where semi-automatic machines become an extension of the collective body, leading to adaptive ritualization of tasks. Both businesses achieve flexible accumulation: the multinational chain transfers global standardized processes to the local market, while small franchises adopt flexible specialization through regional adaptations.

The study highlights how both models exploit low-wage, low-skilled, full-time female workers to carve out a niche in Taiwan's semi-peripheral position within the global economic system. Multinational chains streamline operations through technological deskilling and numerical flexibility, while small franchises capitalize on workers' multi-skilled adaptability and functional flexibility. This gendered exploitation reveals broader implications for understanding labor control and flexibility in the service sector, illustrating how global capitalist strategies intersect with local gender norms to sustain economic growth and manage labor costs.